A modest start to the year: Orangered apricots, Carmine Jewel tart cherris, Spring Satin plumcots. Orangered is not fully ripe yet, but some fruit have been knocked down by wind, they taste good, but not at their best yet. Carmine Jewel could also use some more ripening but it was attacked by earwigs, so I harvested some.
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@Stan… so fun to see your beautiful fruit. We’re in western Montana and our Carmine Jewel is just now blooming. We planted our 5th apricot this spring after losing 4 predecessors to winter kill☹️
What do the plumcots taste like?
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More like an Asian plum but the texture is firmer.
My Orangered tree had a decent crop for the first time this year. A well ripened Orangered apricot is a real treat!
On the other hand, my Tomcot tree typically oversets, but this year I thinned it absolutely mercilessly. As a result, fruits were much larger and sweeter this time around than in previous years when the tree was all orange from being covered by fruit.
Tomcot apricots:
Tomcot apricots on the left (Brix about 21) and Orangered on the right (Brix about 22, but these couple of fruits were not the best Orangered specimens in terms of ripeness and sweetness):
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Orangered and Tomcot are done by now, so my attention switches to other varietiies. Two of the early ripening Anya seedling apricots: E08 and F02. Here’s their comparison side by side, E08 on the left and F02 on the right:
Both are very sweet and flavorful, with Brix above 30 (most samples measure at about 31). Flavor wise I would slightly prefer E08 that is also juicier, but F02 is larger, starts ripening a few days earlier and stays better on the tree when ripe.
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Fabulous reports Stan!
I am somewhat envious that you have ripe apricots while mine are pea sized!
I am looking forward to trying some fruit from your Anya seedling scions I grafted last year. I should get a couple this year!
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On the other hand, you will be eating apricots later in the summer when all of mine are already done! 
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Very true!
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Flavorella plumcot - very aromatic, juicy, sweet-tart, acidic at the skin and near the stone, flavor closer to a plum than an apricot. It’s first year crop for this tree, so we’ll see how it fares in the future.
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Everything is early this year. Tatiana (Anya Seedling W04) Apricot, very juicy, exquisite flavor, Brix at 27–28.
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The summer of 2022 was extremely busy for me. A lot of my trees had strong production, but the main reason was that my wife traveled for two months during the summer, and I had to deal with all that harvest by myself (on top of my full-time job and all other stuff). In particular, both apricot and plum harvests were very strong and they pretty much followed each other. So I really didn’t have time to write about fruit during the harvest season.
Now, I would like to offer some fragmentary observations.
Apricots. With dozens of apricot varieties that I grow, I’ve pretty much become an apricot snob. Many apricot varieties just don’t cut it for me for fresh eating. They go directly to the drier or into jam. I don’t have a full list, but, from the top of my had, these include Harcot, Hoyt Montrose, Redsweet, Tardif de Bordaneil, Tilton. Note that some varieties (e.g., Paiwand, Suphany, Turkey) have been specifically selected for drying and should be used in that way. A large graft of a variety called Le Crème fruited for the first time (and had a bumper crop). It turned out to be a typical white apricot, which is both good (because white apricots are very flavorful) and not so good (because all white apricots taste very similar to each other). Tomcot was a good surprise this year. Typically, it has a huge set, and apparently I never thinned it well enough, so the fruit, despite decent size, were not sweet enough for me. This year, finally, I thinned the Tomcot tree much more rigorously, and the fruit were huge and much sweeter than usual. It’s still not the in the top tier of apricots flavor wise, but can be quite good for its season, if thinned mercilessly.
Gage plums. I had to process a lot since I had way more than I could eat by myself. They are great vacuum sealed and frozen, and they also make a very good jam. I tried drying some and it’s ok as a novelty but not nearly as good as dried apricots or dried blue plums (prunes). Another note: the Pearl plum ripened for me for the first time and I liked it very, very much! Excellent flavor! By some reports it’s a prune/gage hybrid, but the fruit is much more gage-like.
Pears. The Warren pear is a treasure, the tree is FB resistant and in my conditions (California climate and many other varieties grafted on it and near it) it’s also precocious and productive. The fruit can be ripened right on the tree (at least in my climate) but also keep well in a fridge. The flesh is buttery, juicy, and very flavorful.
Figs. Let’s be honest, you cannot eat a lot of fresh figs. I know it’s shocking for some, but it’s the truth. Therefore, you have to process them. I don’t particularly like them vacuum sealed and frozen. So, it’s either jam (which is ok but not top rate for me, at least in comparison to apricot jam) or drying. At least, I was able to trade some fresh figs locally for home grown tomatoes (I didn’t have time to grow tomatoes myself this year). So, I removed a bunch of fig trees this fall. I will use this space for something more useful.
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Always good to hear from you Stan!
Pearl has been good for me as well. Ridiculously sweet, into the low 30’s.
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One more note is about the Gora Roman Kosh Hybrid Persimmon. This is a young tree that has fruited for the first time. The fruit ripened over a long period of time and had different characteristics. Some turned soft and gooey, like an American persimmon or Hachiya, while others stayed hard and crisp. The latter type lost all astringency while still being crisp, like a true non-astringent kaki. I liked the soft ones more for great sweetness and caramel-like flavor, but the hard ones were also quite sweet and flavorful (better than a typical Fuyu, Jiro or Izu, in my opinion). I don’t know how hardy this variety is (since I’m in zone 9), but it should be hardier than a pure kaki, so probably a good choice for people up north who prefer crisp Fuyu type persimmons.
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Thank you Stan! I’ve looked all over for Pearl plum & only found them in a Canadian nursery selling them online. Is there a place in the US I can find that cultivar?
I don’t think you can by a Pearl plum tree, but Bob Purvis sells scionwood.
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Loving the jam I made this summer from Bavay plums. It’s a notch below my apricot jam (especially, the batch made from Anya seedling varieties) but still quite outstanding.
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